I picked up my fiddle at a garage sale. Really.
Saw the ad (who remembers garage sale ads in the actual newspaper?), that said that, among other things, "fiddles" were being offered. Went and looked--sure enough, five or six of them, all around $100 (20-some years ago). Didn't actually buy that day, but took the card for the fiddle-seller, who was the father of the garage sale principal.
Turns out he was a past president of the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers' Association, and his secondary hobby was fixing up basket case fiddles to make them playable. I called him up and went to his house. He spent about an hour with me, showing me the choices (and demonstrating, so I could hear differences in tone). I spent $125, as I recall, for one I fell in love with, with case & bow (I've since upgraded the bow, a couple of times). Still love it.
So yes, you CAN get an inexpensive, decent violin--but there's a HUGE amount of luck involved, and I wouldn't count on eBay as a source.
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